Wednesday, 23 August 2017

#RPGaDAY 2017 - Day 23 - Jaw dropping layout!

Which RPG has the most jaw-dropping layout?

My first thought this time was: I have no idea. Layout to me is something that should be invisible. I can think of a ton of RPGs with bad layout (most of my collection pre: 2000), but good layout, that should be something you don't notice. Something that just works. Now Jaw-Dropping? That took some time to think about.

I actually 'cheated' on this one. I went online to see what other people said. There were some good examples but nothing that stuck out to me or made me think Jaw-Dropping. So I went down to my gaming dungeon and started flipping through books. I considered Agone. A game I bought solely because of how beautiful it is. Looking at it now though it doesn't look all that special. Like early FASA books, there's just some really nice color templates in the middle, the rest of the book is good but nothing special. I flipped through a half dozen other books I remember looking good back when I got them. Deliria, Earthdawn, Chill, and more.

Then I grabbed The Dresden Files Roleplaying Game Volume One Your Story and I knew I had my answer.

Not only does the book have fantastic art, a good font choice and an easy to read two column structure. It also has annotations, footnotes, post-it notes and even looks like someone took a highlighter to some sections. The book looks like it's been used and abused a bit, which perfectly fits the theme.

See this rulebook is representing an, in fiction, artifact. A character from The Dresdenverse (Billy) wrote this game and this book represents a copy of that game given to Harry Dresden. It's Billy's first draft of his game and in it, Harry has written notes, including one that notes that no one uses the term The Dresdenverse.

For those wishing to play along at home, here are the topics for this years #RPGaDay. Feel free to use these cues in your tweets, facebook posts, g+ threads, blog posts and more.